The New Republic

It's bad enough that, if current trends continue, the GOP is likely to lose what should be a gimme congressional seat in New York's 23rd district next month thanks to a conservative spoiler candidate. Now sparks are flying between the moderate GOP nominee, Dede Scozzafava, and The Weekly Standard, which backs Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman. READ MORE >>

One of the reasons I've been rooting hard for the success of the Fox show "Glee" (apart from simply loving it to pieces) is my belief that a successful TV musical could open up all kinds of other broadcast possibilities. In particular, I've hoped for a while now that some network exec would have the brains to hire Joss Whedon (of "Buffy," "Angel," and "Firefly" fame) to develop his own musical. He's proven he's more than up to the task with the "Buffy" episode "Once More with Feeling" and the wonderful "Dr. READ MORE >>

In a piece largely about next month's congressional election in New York's 23rd district, The Wall Street Journal's Naftali Bendavid echoes and enlarges upon some of the points I made in a blog post about the electoral dangers the tea-party movement could present for the GOP: READ MORE >>

David Frum, trying harder than usual to alienate himself from the derangement of his party, suggests a thought experiment to determine which conservative "entertainers" actually believe the lunacy they peddle: READ MORE >>

Even as Neil Patrick Harris's star continues to ascend--and polls capture the ongoing sea-change in public acceptance of homosexuality--putatively pro-gay Hollywood continues to maintain the celluloid closet. In a fascinating piece on the subject, LA Weekly reports: READ MORE >>

Near the end of Maurice Sendak’s classic Where the Wild Things Are, as young protagonist Max is abandoning the fantastical creatures who have crowned him their king, the Wild Things plead, “Oh please don’t go--we’ll eat you up--we love you so.” The line neatly captures one of the central insights of Sendak’s slim masterwork: the close proximity in the preadolescent mind between affection and aggression, between the loving and the eating. READ MORE >>

Not murder in the literal sense, of course, though in this case the metaphor is less distant than one would prefer. READ MORE >>

One day after launching its new website with great fanfare and to great ridicule, the RNC has already changed the name of chairman Michael Steele's blog from "What up?" (which attracted a considerable portion of the aforementioned ridicule) to "Changing the Game." No irony intended, as far as I can tell. You can find Steele's musings on life, politics, and the GOP--beginning with his observation that "The Internet has been around a while, now"--here. READ MORE >>

Red State maestro Erick Erickson has a plan for dealing with heretics, even if it requires conflating the worlds of Narnia and Oz: Olympia Snowe has sold out the country. Having been banished to our world after Aslan chased her out of Narnia, Snowe is intent on corrupting this place too. So we should melt her. What melts snow? Rock salt. READ MORE >>

It's quite disappointing that, as Jim Fallows notes, no one involved in writing or editing The Washington Post's lead editorial Saturday--which argued that, rather than Barack Obama, Iranian martyr Neda Agha-Soltan ought to have received the Nobel Peace Prize--seems to have been aware, or made any effort to become aware, of the facts that a) the Nobel is not given posthumously; and b) the deadline for nominations is in February, long before the world had heard Neda's name.  READ MORE >>